Yesterday was election day for the National Assembly in Taiwan. The two most important figures were: 83% of people voted for parties supporting constitutional reform, while turnout was just over 23%. The low turnout was not a surprise (especially given the atrocious weather yesterday), while the high support rate for constitutional reform was very good news. It means that the constitutional reform package (described here) is almost certain to be passed, which is a major step forward for politics in Taiwan.

A loss for the smaller parties

The two mainstream parties were the main ‘winners’ of the election: the DPP with 42% and the KMT with 38% of the vote. The TSU and PFP parties got 7% and 6% respectively – which must call into doubt their long term futures; although part of the reason for their low polling was their position on this election (why would anyone vote for parties opposing much needed reform?), the low turnout should have worked to their advantage – moderate voters (i.e. the ones who didn’t turn up yesterday) tend to vote for the two big parties. The TSU are claiming a success, because they displaced the PFP as the 3rd biggest party – but the truth is simply that the PFP support collapsed more than the TSUs.

Nothing to do with trips to China and President Chen’s response

The standard newspaper take on this election was that it would be a virtual referendum on the KMT & PFP trips to the mainland, and President Chen Shui Bian’s response. Here are 10 reasons why this was never the case:

The issues

1. This election was about constitutional reform – which had nothing to do with the relationship with China, or the recent trips
2. The two main parties at odds over the recent trips (the DPP & KMT) held exactly the same position on this election (supporting constitutional reform), making it hard to vote for/against links with China.
3. The two parties that visited China (the KMT & PFP) held diametrically opposite positions on this election, making it impossible to vote ‘for’ those trips.

The DPP is not the same as Chen Shui Bian

4. Each ballot allowed 1 vote for a political party – not for/against the government or president
5. Chen is no longer the chairman of the DPP, and does not control DPP policy – so a vote for the DPP is not a vote for Chen Shui Bian
6. Chen’s position on several issues has been markedly different to that of a lot of DPP politicians lately (in particular, his response to the Lien/Soong trips to China was a lot milder than the DPPs). His influence with party members is probably weaker now than at any time in the DPPs history. There are plenty of staunch DPP voters who disapprove of Chen’s recent actions.

The campaigining and electorate

7. The different parties campaigned in very different ways for this election – affecting the results. The DPP campaigned on the issues, the KMTs campaign was based on Lien Chan’s ‘peace trip’ to China, while the TSU & PFP hardly campaigned at all
8. Only 23% of the electorate voted – meaning that moderate voters (who may have altered their opinions on the different parties over the China trips) were hardly represented at all
9. There are opinion polls almost every day in Taiwan. Why would the electorate of Taiwan use an election about one issue to feedback to the government on a completely separate issue?
10. The main news story in the last week has not been James Soong’s trip to China, nor fallout from Lien Chan’s visit, nor reaction from the government to these trips. The main news story has been about the suicide of a Taiwanese ‘media personality’; while the China trips have been big news, they have not been the earth-shattering events for Taiwan that some international newspapers have made out

In a previous post, I described the issues behind this week’s National Assembly Elections. What about the actual election, and the positions of the main parties?

The TSU and PFP do an about face

Back in August last year, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) and the People First Party (PFP) both supported the constitutional change that is behind these elections. One of the main reasons for their support was that they didn’t want to be seen as the parties that were ‘obstructing progress’ before the legislative elections. Now that those elections have been and gone (with disastrous results for both parties), they no longer seem to care about public opinion. For them, it is now about voting to save their jobs. If the size of the legislature is halved (as is proposed), then half of these politicians will be out of a job in 3 years time – and with the reform making it harder for the smaller parties to compete, a large number of TSU & PFP legislators fear for their own future.

Neither of these parties have done much campaigning; their position is so hard to support that they are hoping people will just vote along party lines without knowing what the real issues are.

The DPP & KMT: A new unholy alliance

On the other side of the fence, the DPP and the KMT are both supporting the changes. This has lead to the slightly bizarre sight of DPP adverts which slag off the TSU (the traditional ideological partner of the DPP) and the PFP (who the DPP are still trying to forge an alliance with), while trying to say as little as possible about the KMT (their traditional enemy). The image on the left is a snapshot of one of their adverts – with the yellow (TSU) and orange (PFP) candidates changing their ‘yes’ to a ‘no’, while the green (DPP) candidate confirms his ‘yes’ vote.

In contrast, the KMT have been running adverts to build on the success of their recent trip to China (the KMT is working with China to ensure peace, while the DPP don’t even know how to spell the word). The fact that this has nothing to do with the issues at stake in this election is, it seems, beside the point.

Will anyone bother to vote?

Despite efforts to appeal to the gambling instincts of the Taiwanese, the turnout for this election is guaranteed to be tiny. The Central Election Committee is hoping for a turnout of about 40%; personally I’ll be surprised if it’s much above 20%. There’s been very little campaining, most of the campaining has ignored the issues, very few people even know there’s an election coming (much less know what it’s about), and after 2 important, high-profile and acrimonious elections last year, people are a bit apathetic about yet another election.

Confusion over the process

One final reason for the predicted low turnout is confusion about what people are voting for; people are being asked to vote for a party that they voted for 3 months ago – over an issue which every party agreed upon 6 months ago. To add to the confusion, it is still unclear how the elected National Assembly would then vote on the constitutional change. The legislature has to pass a law to define how that is done (is a straight 50% majority enough to pass the change? Or 75% super-majority? Still undecided) – and they have not yet done so. It is conceivable we won’t know this until after the election, or even that it will never get decided – in which case the National Assembly will literally do nothing.

The bottom line

Six months ago, we saw a rare agreement between Taiwanese politicians to improve the democratic process. That legislators were (in a large part) willing to vote themselves out of a job for the betterment ot Taiwan was quite a surprise. Unfortunately, since then normal service (i.e. petty bickering between the parties) has resumed and is threatening to undermine this progress.

The current process for constitutional reform is a mess – which is in danger of turning into a full blown farce. It’s a catch-22 position: the current process for constitutional reform is a mess, which just emphasises the need for constitutional reform! I can only hope that the KMT & DPP between them get enough votes to push through this reform.

May 14th is National Assembly election day in Taiwan – it’s a single issue election, with constitutional reform the only topic. A couple of months ago the election was looking like a formality, with all four major political parties supporting the proposed reforms. Now, however, things are looking different – as two of the four parties have changed their minds.

Although this issue has got little press recently (and none internationally), it is likely to have a far greater long-term effect than any trips to China by Lien Chan or James Soong.

Constitutional Reform

Back in August last year, the legislature unanimously agreed a set of reforms to the constitution of the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name). The main proposals were:

• To halve the size of the Legislature
• To alter the election process for the Legislature
• To disband the National Assembly
• To allow all future constitutional changes via referenda

Reforming the legislature

The biggest problem with democracy in Taiwan at the moment are the politicians who get elected to the legislature. There are several reasons for this, but a major reason is the election process – which makes election of extremists much more likely than other systems. There are only a small number of voting districts, with each of them returning several legislators; so for example in the Taoyuan district there were 28 politicians competing for 11 positions – this meant that it was possible to get elected with just over 4% of the vote! In this sort of environment, a winning strategy is to do anything to get in the news, and hope that 90% of people think you’re an idiot, but 10% think you’re clever and worth voting for.

The result: candidates who get into fights, take up extreme positions (not just on unification/independence) and don’t care what the majority think. This needs to change.

The proposed constitutional change will improve things immeasurably, by bringing Taiwan into line with most Western nations. It will be a “single district, dual vote” system, with one vote for a legislator and the other vote for a party. Each district elects only one candidate, and a set of seats are reserved for parties on a proportional basis. The number of legislators will also be halved – hopefully bringing up the average quality, and a single term will be increased from 3 to 4 years.

Abolishing the National Assembly

The second part of reform is to abolish the National Assembly. This used to be the most powerful body in the ROC political system (there’s a good description here), but it has been gradually losing power (to the Legislature and the President) ever since the KMT retreated to Taiwan in 1949. Members used to represent each province of China – which made reelection of 95% of the members somewhat problematic while the ‘Communist rebels’ controlled the mainland; this meant the original members stayed in their posts until they died of old age (which started to happen with some regularity in the 70s and 80s). Clearly this is now a remnant of a previous era, and it deserves to be finally scrapped.

The only power that remains in the National Assembly is to be responsible for any change to the Consitution. The proposed change will make this a function jointly of the Legislature (to propose and agree any change) and a referendum of the people (to enact the change).

However, the National Assembly needs to be convened one last time to make these proposed changes to the constitution.

This is all background to the National Assembly elections; I will describe the actual election in a follow up post.

Was it a breakthrough in cross-strait relations? Or the first step in ‘selling out Taiwan’? Of course it was neither, but it was worryingly easy to find supporters of either of those arguments. However, almost everyone (except for people who completely distrust the KMT) agreed that it was a big political success. Two themes emerged from the visit

It’s good to talk

The main thing to say about Lien Chan’s trip was that it was never expected to have any concrete results (two panda bears excepted) – and so just completing the trip without any mistakes meant that it was a great political success. If the goal of the trip was just to talk, then it was pretty easy to complete this successfully.

However, a fairly common theme has been that the trip was a tactical masterstroke. I see two problems with this view:

1. Ever since the KMT lost power in 2000, they have been the party that would/could talk with China – which makes it a bit surprising that it’s taken them five years to actually get round to doing it.
2. The KMT is seeing a (one-off?) spike in popularity now … 3 years away from the next presidential/legislative elections. Doing this 18 months ago would have been a masterstroke; doing it now seems like bad timing.

Winding up the pan-Green camp

The secondary effect of this trip has been to annoy the hell out of the DPP & TSU politicians. This has meant that they have looked bad due to riots at the airport (irrespective of ‘who started it’), and petulant in complaining about everything related to the trip. Of course, the childish behaviour of the KMT in not clarifying whether they would obey the law, and in refusing to see the President helped to piss off the pan-Greens even more. I suspect the behaviour of the government and their supporters has had as much to do with increased support for the KMT as the trip itself.

It didn’t take long for the gift of two pandas from China to Taiwan to become politicised. For a couple of days after the rumour of the gift started, everyone was happily thinking up names for the future inhabitants of Taipei Zoo (thoughts of naming them after Lien Chan ‘連連’ & ‘戰戰’ was quickly halted when people realised that naming a “peace gift” ‘War War’ might not be that clever). However, as soon as the offer was officially announced, political doubts raised their head:

The Council of Agriculture (COA) will act according to the law and professionally assess without regard to political considerations whether Taiwan can adequately care for the pandas that China has offered as gifts to the Taiwanese people.

Lee noted that the panda is an animal protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITIES), and according to its regulations, the export and import of pandas requires permits from the organization.

Now here’s the problem: Taiwan is not a member of CITES, because CITES (being affiliated with the UN) only recognises China (i.e. the PRC). So, CITES would not view this as an international trade – and the PRC obviously wouldn’t. So, will the relevant permits be signed?

The other issue raised has been whether ‘panda diplomacy’ is a good thing:

The Environmental & Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST), along with 30 groups from the private sector, urged politicians from China and Taiwan to stop using rare animals as bargaining chips on the diplomatic table.
[…]
Forcing the animals to leave their natural habitat is an act of physical abuse to the animals disguised under a veil of good intentions, stressed EAST. The majority of animals placed on display in zoos are for the sole purpose of entertainment for the public, the organization added.

They have a point – should creatures facing extinction be used in this way? Unfortunately, they completely undermine their whole argument in the same article:

The upkeep for a pair of giant pandas entails a huge cost, said EAST. Countries that receive them as “gifts” are obligated to donate US$1 million per head to China’s giant panda conservation fund annually. Aside from the huge contribution the island will be obliged to pay, the maintenance fee for keeping the pandas is approximately NT$50 million a year, EAST claimed.

So, this animal preservation society is complaining about the idea of spending money on panda conservation, as well as complaining about the amount of money that will be spent treating the pandas in the zoo properly …